Valve has been hard at work on SteamOS and its hardware. Ars Technica reports that Valve has added analog buttons to the Steam Controller and has also removed its touchscreen. This is a big change to the Steam Controller that could please some gamers while angering others.

Valve is showing images of a new version of the controller that replaces those buttons and the planned touchscreen on the face of the controller with new analog directional and action buttons that resemble the layout of many other gaming controllers.

I'm glad to see that Valve is taking user feedback into consideration as it evolves the Steam Controller. There seemed to be a significant amount of concern expressed by many people about the initial version of the Steam Controller and Valve was clearly listening.

This tweaked version looks like it might be a little more comfortable for gamers to use. Of course we'll have to wait until the revised Steam Controller is in the hands of gamers before we can know how they'll react to it.

I don't think there will be many tears shed for the Steam Controller's now departed touchscreen. But then again, you never know. Some people might have been looking forward to it. Either way, it's out of the picture for now.

The fact that Valve was willing to listen to critical responses to its hardware design bodes very well its SteamOS products. The company knows it has to get the design right and it's pulling out all the stops to get it done. Kudos to Valve for being flexible enough to make useful changes as it prepares to launch SteamOS.

Valve forks Debian with SteamOS

Speaking of Valve, Softpedia reports that SteamOS is now officially a fork of Debian.

SteamOS is a fork (derivative) of Debian[www.debian.org] GNU/Linux. The first version (SteamOS 1.0) is called 'alchemist' and it is based on the Debian 'wheezy' (stable 7.1) distribution.